Colin Powell celebrated his 71st birthday this year but he`s clearly not too old to pull some cheeky Afro-hip-hop moves. His take on Olu Maintain`s song Yahooze at the Africa Rising event at the Royal Albert Hall worked a lot better than his former boss George Bush`s embarrassing inaugural shape-throwing alongside Ricky Martin. Although he kept his jacket buttoned, almost everyone deemed his dancing spot-on.

But it doesn`t look as if the former US secretary of state paid too much attention to the lyrics, or he might have discovered that the Nigerian hit is a celebration of that country`s most infamous export, advance-fee email fraud (sometimes called 419 fraud, after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code). The perpetrators are known as "Yahoo boys" after their email service-provider of choice.

"I stand before you tonight as an African-American," The Times quoted Powell as telling the audience. "Many people say to me, `You became secretary of state of the USA., is it really necessary to say you are an African-American, or that you are black?` And I say, `Yes,` so that we can remind our children. It took a lot of people struggling to bring me to this point in history. I didn`t just drop out of the sky. People came from my continent in chains. There`s no reason a new Africa can`t be created right here and now."

Of course, it`s purely racist for anybody to suggest that race had any influence on Powell`s endorsement of Obama, even when Powell admits it was a factor.